Beauty is pure.
The idea is to be pure, too,
to see it through.

Life is short, is on the move,
never does the truth grow old.
Destination du jour is one not two.
Either end up with a thorn or a rose.

Read a heart, find the truth beforehand,
when two folks both tend to hide.
It’s worth looking closely, maybe
one is hiding one’s true self,
one is a pearl keeping inside the shell!

Eenie,
Meenie,
Miney,
Mo,

Catch a poet by his toes,
If he suffers,
Let him go,

Eenie,
Meany,
Miney,

Oh...

She belonged to him, no other man,
So he said to her each day she left.
To sell the eggs and the dress she made,
To pull them from the line of the poor.

On the way to town each day she passed,
The rings of County Tipperary.
The ancient rings that live the wee folk,
Who dance in moonlight and trick us all.

That day she waited to see her kin,
But she left no gift to please the old.
So home she came with arms still heavy,
and a chest that weighed a cough so foul.  

“My Bridget” as he knelt by her bed,
Holding her hand as it shook with cold.
In the crack of the flame voices he heard
To hang him from his grief with despair.

The news he heard was of his father
Whom died the evening he felt alone.
Mr Cleary swore and slammed his fist.
“Midnight tonight or Bridget is lost!”

The men in village knew the tale,
Of the wee folk who cursed Bridget.
The woman in the Cleary home bed,
Was an echo of the wife he loved.

They held her down and asked her, her name,
She screamed and growled but did not reply,
Three times they asked and still she refused.
So tight the grips they beat her to sleep.

The morning arrived, Bridget awoke,
To her husband who looked upon her.
His eyes full of loss and fear as-well,
“my Bridget?” he asked “are they gone now?”

She smiled and agreed, she was alone,
So the priest came to deliver mass.
Mr Cleary agreed and drank from the cup
But he knew that his wife was not home.

He asked her again, three more times; “Speak,
Your name to me now, are you my wife?”
Each time she replied “It is I, Yes.”
Michael still knew his wife was away.

That evening men from the town arrived  
And took Bridget deep into the bog,
Where they bound her and lay her down flat,
As she screamed for her husband to help.

“It is I, It is me, Your sweet wife,
Believe me my husband I am here,
No faerie has seized my soul from me,
No witch has uttered a devil curse.”

Her mouth was covered and bound so tight
Her screams were made only with her eyes.
In front of the men, Michael asked her.
“Are you my wife? My Bridget Cleary?”

No voice or reply came from the girl.
Her body lay still in the bog land.
So onto a bed of wood she was placed,
And burned in the cold evening moon light.

The story was told through the village,
That Bridget had fled with another,
A man who bought all her eggs each week,
But not everyone believed this tale.

The priest of the village found Michael,
Praying blood, sweat and tears in the church.
He told him the fairies had taken,
The changeling they had placed there before.    

The priest told the men of the Garda
That ****** was rife in this village.
That men had taken a sick women
And burned her to death in the bog land.

Michael was guilty of Manslaughter
No conviction of ****** was passed
For the people believed his story,
The woman who burned was not his wife  

To this day the rings of Tipperary
Still grow foxglove and weeds in the cracks,
The Faerie mounds are feared like darkness
And steered clear of, by those who live near.

Even now it is heard in the school,
By the children who skip on the rope.
“Are you a witch, or are you a fairy,
Or are you the wife of Michael Cleary?”

I have a friend, he's mostly made of pain
He wakes up, drives to work and straight back home again
He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover
And I tried to tell him he had a sense
Of color and composition so magnificent
And he said, "Thank you, please
But your flattery
It's truly not becoming me
Your eyes are poor, you're blind you see
No beauty could have come from me
I'm a waste
Of breath, of space, of time"

I knew a woman, she was dignified and true
Her love for her man was one of her many virtues
Until one day she found out that he had lied
And decided the rest of her life from that point on would be a lie
She was grateful for everything that had happened
And she was anxious for all that would come next
But then she wept, what did you expect?
In that big old house with the car she kept
And, "Such is life," she often said
With one day leading to the next
You get a little closer to your death
Which was fine with her, she never got upset
And with all the days she may have left
She would never clean another mess
Or fold his shirts or look her best
She was free
To waste away alone

Last night, my brother he got drunk and drove
And this cop pig pulled him off to the side of the road
And he said, "Officer, officer, you've got the wrong man
No, no, I'm a student of medicine, a son of a banker, you don't understand"
The cop said, "No one got hurt, you should be thankful
And your carelessness, it is something awful
And no, I can't just let you go
And though your father's name is known
Your decisions now are yours alone
You're nothing but a stepping stone
On a path
To debt, to loss, to shame"

The last few months I've been living with this couple
Yeah, you know the kind who buy everything in doubles
Yeah, they fit together like a puzzle
I love their love, and I am thankful
That someone actually receives the prize that was promised
By all those fairy tales that drugged us
And still do me, I'm sick, lonely
No laurel tree, just green envy
Will my number come up eventually?
Like love's some kind of lottery
Where you scratch and see what's underneath
It's sorry, just one cherry
I'll play again, get lucky

So now I hang out down by the train's depot
No, I don't ride, I just sit and watch the people there
They remind me of windup cars in motion
The way they spin and turn and jockey for positions
And I want to scream out that it all is nonsense
And their life's one track and can't they see it's pointless?
But just then my knees give under me
My head feels weak and suddenly
It's clear to see it's not them but me
Who's lost my self-identity
And I hide behind these books I read
While scribbling my poetry
Like art could save a wretch like me
With some ideal ideology
That no one could hope to achieve
And I'm never real, it's just a sketch of me
And everything I've made is trite and cheap
And a waste
Of paint, of tape, of time

So I park my car down by the cathedral
Where the floodlights point up at the steeples
Choir practice is filling up with people
I hear the sound escaping as an echo
Sloping off the ceiling at an angle
When the voices blend they sound like angels
I hope there's some room still in the middle
But when I lift my voice up now to reach them
The range is too high way up in heaven
So I hold my tongue, forget the song
Tie my shoes, start walking off
And try to just keep moving on
With my broken heart and my absent God
And I have no faith but it's all I want
To be loved, and believe
In my soul, in my soul



(This is not mine, its from my favorite singer/song writer Conor Oberst/Bright Eyes)

They are more starved for Nature
Then one can ever fathom;
Oh, where is that secret  
Off they go in a cabin;
that they may frequent
All the noise and pollution
It melts and floats away;
Into life's little solution.

It's back to the plough of life so rough;
They like the smithy toil day after day
Their life may be starved, very tough,
Oh, to listen to the wild loon's call.
How it haunts them each day after day;
How they stomach their bitter gall?
Taking a wooden loon back to the city.
Until that cabin is reached it is a pitty.
When the wild calls; Good-bye city.

There once was a man from Sydney
who said, 'That man stole my sheep, didn' 'e!'
He chased him to Illawong,
pushed him in a billabong,
and stabbed him twelve times in the kidney.

Du Chene and La Plante preach through the wires,
As I light up a smoke,
Watching the candle gently sway ever so,
As these two bear witness to the making of legends.

Personal courage,
To tell one's personal tale,
To cast off the societal thirlage,
And wander to where the predators wail.

They sing in perfect synchronisation,
The country twang of Du Chene a contrast to La Plante's,
Her vocals heartbrakingly beautiful,
As if the entire swath of water that is the Mississippi were as smooth as glass,
With the ability to turn as haunting as the memory of a lost love.

The skill to keep your wits about you,
Are needed in lands such as these,
And if you survive your legends will grow,
Gaining momentum to match the distance you travel and the tasks you complete,
Traveling with you,
Like the sensation of stain in a long healed wound,
That occasionally ghosts along the area.

That after your gone and long faded, Your travels will live on,
A wraith along those old and now overgrown trails,
To morph into something almost alive,
With each retelling of your tale.

Winding down their tune,
The music takes a calm tone once again,
Like how you imagined the eye of a hurricane as a kid,
Slowly winding up again a tad as if to hint at the struggles ahead,
They sing of where they wish to be,
And their willingness to bear the brunt of their tasks to reach their promised haven.

Goodnight I, lost the fight I,
Cheated death for a while my friend
Now I’m off for a better fit
Off to a place of happiness
And no pain
Tonight

I lost all my movements
I’m in and out of consciousness now
I can’t breathe but I can still dream
I still hear you through that morphine wall
But I can’t get through
Tonight

My heart skips a beat
Like a stone over a pond
If seeing is believing
I guess I don’t see at all…

Goodnight I know it’s late
Let’s toast the good years
We spent in waste
All the bars, all the conversations
All the details, they blur into one
Goodnight friend
Goodbye friend
You’re a ******* and you’re a drunk

Goodnight friend
My blackout friend
You always kick me when I’m down
And I’m sorry I lost the fight
Just from my window there is no light
There’s no prize, there’s no woman
So there’s nothing left in my sight

Goodnight friend, goodbye friend
There’s no feeling and no pain
Tonight

Goodnight